The vicious and resourceful spies whom he fought are as powerful as the CIA. They have their inner leads through double spies. The Russian spies, are athletic, mean, and ruthless in their plot to destroy the American oil reserve and advance the Russian market. The Chinese spy accidentally and unkowingly possessed the secret chemical formula that belongs to the terrorists through the sneaking into his computer by the boy whom he was baby-sitting. The missing electronic files ended up in the middle school where the young boy attends. The innocuous playful task of the little boy got the Chinese spy and his baby sitter to be suspected as a double spy. The missing computer files drove the hidden double spy and the Russians terrorists to chase the Chinese spy who for the retrieval of the precious files.

The Chinese classified agent could easily be traced to the nuclear scientist from Sandia lab whom Clinton’s folks accused for downloading classified secrets. Also, the double spy could also be traced to a recent figure in the same Clinton’s administration. The remaining spy technologies are no ground breaking either. The three kids in the Spy Next Door performed much better than the two in the recent movie Old Dogs. They rivaled “Home Alone” by behaving like real kids. The story of the movie is entirely a makeshift scenario of the contemporary news.

Where the movie gains strength was most probably the display of how kids would easily and unconditionally fall in love with adult figures as soon as trust is established. Bob, the American alias for the Chinese fellow, possesses enough cultural depth of deprivation and suffering that enabled him to level with three foreign kids and make them love him unconditionally.

Rating: 5 / 5

The spy next door is about a babysitter that gets a mother’s family in big trouble. There was a fight between the mean people and the babysitter. Find out why they are fighting!

My favorite part is when the babysitter starts to beat up the mean guys. The mean guys just sit there. I was laughing so hard that I spit popcorn out of my mouth on the floor.

If you are looking for an action-packed movie, you should try the spy next door. It will make you laugh so hard you will pee your pants! You will find it at your local movie store.

Rating: 5 / 5

Chan plays Bob Ho, an undercover CIA agent who wants to retire and marry his next door neighbor, Gillian (Amber Valletta), having secretly dated her for some time. Bob assumes the role of the average guy next door by acting geeky and wearing glasses, which is fine if you like laughing at him, not with him. Gillian … well, she’s just Gillian, having no discernable personality or quirk that would make her even slightly interesting. The one scene of the two having dinner together is enough to make it clear that a union of any kind is inconceivable. There’s absolutely no chemistry between them. Chan might as well have been speaking to Valletta in his native Cantonese – the effect would be more or less the same.

The problem for Bob is that Gillian is a single mom, and her children absolutely despise him. Farren (Madeline Carroll) is your typical moody teenager, always angry, always disrespectful, always referring to Gillian by her first name because she’s technically her stepmother. There are moments when her attitude is so bad that you just want to slap her across the face. Ian (Will Shadley) is a super-smart, technically savvy, thrill-seeking middle-schooler who regularly lies in a desperate effort to be “cool,” especially with girls. There is not a trace of truth in this character; he doesn’t even work as a parody of the precocious kid. The youngest is four-year-old Nora (Alina Foley), who’s so cute that it’s downright nauseating; she’s a girly-girl who likes kitties and princess costumes and the color pink, and she can never speak without dropping her R’s like Elmer Fudd.

When Gillian is called away from home, Bob volunteers to take care of her children, who, of course, do what they can to make his life a living hell. But then things turn sinister: Bob’s last captive, a Russian terrorist named Poldark (Magnus Scheving), has escaped from prison and is plotting to evaporate the world’s oil supplies with a special solution, the formula of which just happened to be downloaded from Bob’s computer onto Ian’s iPod. Yeah, I know. Anyway, as Bob tries to bond with Gillian’s kids, he must also fight off scores of bad guys in a series of action sequences. Believe me, they’re not as entertaining as the ads make them seem.

Helping Bob along are his former CIA partners Glaze (George Lopez) and Colton (Billy Ray Cyrus), the latter given dialogue that even Dr. Phil would think is hokey. Consider this helpful bit of advice for Bob: “Don’t get married. Just find some woman you’re gonna hate in five years and give her your house.” Think about the demographic this film is aimed towards. Do you honestly think it will laugh at that joke? Then again, who’s to say that adults will laugh at it? There were plenty of parents in the theater the day I saw it, and I didn’t hear so much as a snicker from any of them. I didn’t hear much out of the little ones either, although I distinctly remember a young girl, maybe around six years old, asking her father for a sip of his soda.

Someone should take this as a sign. What do we mean by subjecting younger audiences to this? Is Hollywood really so drained of imagination? There’s such little creativity in “The Spy Next Door,” it’s as if the filmmakers believe that today’s kids are nothing more than mindless drones that will laugh at anything, even at things that are anything but funny. Consider this throwaway gag featuring the children’s pet pig: At breakfast, Ian sneaks a few pieces of bacon under the table for the pig to eat, and it does. “That’s just wrong,” observes Farren, which is correct, except that the scene plays as a lighthearted joke instead of a disturbing visual. There’s nothing amusing about this, and the fact that the writers thought differently is downright deplorable.

In 2006, Jackie Chan apologized for interrupting a concert in Hong Kong while under the influence. If he knows what’s good for him, he will apologize for making “The Spy Next Door.” Since we pay in excess of $9.00 for a movie ticket these days, I think it’s the least he can do for us.
Rating: 2 / 5